* Microsoft beefs up its virtualization offering
At EMA, my research into virtualization (which you can help, by taking the survey here – more on that later) has brought me to the world’s largest software companies to talk about their recent virtualization announcements.
I talked to IBM about its acquisition of Rembo Technology, a small vendor that does bare-metal provisioning, something IBM/Tivoli was lacking. IBM positioned this as a virtualization play, because it allows IT to respond to business peaks and troughs by provisioning and releasing virtual systems “on demand,” to meet dynamic business needs.
The big news, however, was from Microsoft, which finally announced release dates (and names) for System Center Virtual Machine Manager (formerly codenamed Carmine) – beta within 90 days and release in the second half of 2007; and the Windows Hypervisor (formerly codenamed Veridian) – beta at the end of 2006 and release within 6 months of Longhorn. These are both earlier than expected, but only time will tell if Microsoft can meet these dates.
Microsoft also announced that it is entering the application virtualization market. Application virtualization, such as Citrix Presentation Server and Altiris SVS, allows enterprises to deliver multiple instances (not just interfaces) of a single application to multiple users. Microsoft’s Terminal Services Remote Programs, a component of Longhorn (although probably not until SP1) will provide virtual access to remotely hosted applications.
Microsoft also bought an ISV called Softricity, which provides a subset of application virtualization called application streaming. As with streaming media (think Real Audio, You Tube, or Google Movies), Softricity streams a complete application (like Word or Visio) across the network, allowing a user to open it as soon as the transmission starts, while the remaining code continues to download. The application installs temporarily in a local ‘sandbox,’ so there are no conflicts with existing applications. Other application streaming products include Ardence Software-Streaming Platform and the upcoming Citrix Project Tarpon.
Microsoft explained how Softricity lets you use a new version of Office without installing the old version, without waiting for a 500MB download to complete, and without hazardous DLL conflicts from other applications or older versions. I expect Microsoft will take it further, for instance, being able to stream Microsoft applications “on demand” as a service from Windows Live.
This is a very different tack for Microsoft, which has previously focused its virtualization strategy on desktop (Terminal Services) and operating system (Virtual Server). Now it is moving into server (Windows Hypervisor), management (System Center VMM) and, with Softricity, application virtualization – in effect, delivering a complete virtualization stack.
As I mentioned at the start, I am researching virtualization – in all its forms – and would love to get your feedback. Please take a few minutes to take the survey. If you read this far, you are just the person I need to respond, and will be interested in the free copy of the final report (usually reserved for EMA subscribers) that you will get for participating. Or just e-mail me – I would love to hear from you in any format.
